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Kelson writes "For the upcoming release of Firefox, Mozilla is preparing Download Day 2008: a campaign to set a world record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. Participants are asked to pledge to download Firefox 3 on the day that it's launched. The exact date hasn't been scheduled yet, but everything seems on track for June."

This reminds me of the story of a man who found himself in possession of tickets to the World Series. Instead of auctioning them off, he decided to sell them for $150 each to the first person to send him an email to his corporate account at 2:17 pm. He printed flyers and handed them out to everyone he knew. At the stroke of 2:17, guess what happened? The corporate email server went down after receiving over 800 emails in less than one second.

Doesn't matter. On the Big Day, it's guaranteed that someone will announce it here, and within minutes we'll slashdot the server.

Someone else suggested getting the current beta version, because it seems to work just fine. This won't help their server, though, because on the Big Day, your beta version will check, find that there's an upgrade, ask if you want to download it - and you'll join in the slashdotting.

What's the current record? I'd expect MS service packs to set a pretty high bar. Also, how are they counting? If Debian get Firefox 3 through into testing on the day (which I doubt), would an install via aptitude count, or are they only counting direct downloads from Mozilla?

Depends on the patch. Some service packs contain significant new software. How else would they pass 100MB in size? Of course, it's fair to say that those tend to be the early service packs and not so heavily downloaded on their launch day as later ones.

Yes, but people _need_ to download the WoW patches as soon as they come out to continue to feed their addictive whereas Windows users are usually (or should be) scared to download the newest service pack when it first comes out.

Actually, we can guess at this number pretty well. WoW currently has around 10 million users. So the number of daily downloads is going to be less than 10 million, but obviously greater than zero. So there you go, somewhere between zero and 10 million. We don't need your fancy percentages here.

Right, so fewer than 10 million, but more than zero because the day with the most number of downloads will have at least 1 (worst case scenario each user downloads consecutively and the servers allow 1 download per day).

What part of "less than 10 million, but obviously greater than zero" doesn't jive with "not all 10 million get patches on the same day"?

Nah their client sucks.. it's the kind of thing you only use once unless unless you really enjoy waiting about 3 weeks for your patches. The fastest way to get it with the client is to switch of the p2p and go direct to blizzard. The fastest way overall is wait a few hours for the mirror sites to get it and download it at full speed from them - that's what I expect most people do.

One problem with this is, how many people actually download from ONLY the HTTP source? The wow Patcher uses a BitTorrent based P2P system. There is a rather high chance that you will get little, if any from their Direct HTTP Download source on any given patch day. Now, as the time that the patch was released and the time that you are downloading increases, this amount will increase as not nearly as many people will have the P2P Updater running.

I would suspect "software downloads" would imply an independent application and not a patch or a service pack. I'm sure they have their servers prepared to get Slashdotted and Digged, etc for the marketing event. Though I wonder why Microsoft with it's money couldn't hire a marketing firm to think up something savvy like that for Internet Explorer.

It would also be a great opportunity to promote bittorent as a mass downloading medium. Too bad it doesn't seem to be in the plan.

It would also be a great opportunity to promote bittorent as a mass downloading medium. Too bad it doesn't seem to be in the plan.

Could they track the number of downloads if they used bittorrent? Also, if their goal is a record number of downloads for Firefox, do they want to set up an additional hurdle for people? "First, you have to download and install one of these other programs. No wait, we can explain why. Come back."

Bittorent doesn't allow for tracking downloads. It's one of the things that really holds it back for general use for a lot of companies. For example, a lot of internet TV shows would LOVE to use bittorent to reduce their download overhead (which is HUGE), but how are they supposed to determine their "ratings" if they're not sure how many donwloads they've had? They used to talk a lot about this over at DLTV [dl.tv].

Since presumably my Firefox 2 will bug me to update to 3 as soon as it's released?

Not to disparage Mozilla, but lately it seems like they've been a mite too concerned with press releases. They should release when it's ready, and we'll get it when we think it's ready. What's the big rush?

I'm actually not sure if Firefox 2 will automatically update to Firefox 3. For one, Firefox 3 doesn't support older OSes like Windows 98, ME, and OS X 10.3.9. I'm sure the update manager can sense this though so maybe it's not a big deal. Secondly, Firefox 3 is slightly visually different, I'm not sure if they want to force it on users until they're ready.

Not to disparage Mozilla, but lately it seems like they've been a mite too concerned with press releases.

I think this is a cool idea. There are still lots of people who don't know there are other browsers in existence; when they open IE they say they're opening "the internet." Anything that makes the news and makes them aware of alternate browsers is good - especially if it's "hey this thing is really popular." For many people, that's the best argument for trying it.

Mozilla seems to have done pretty well by harnessing the power of fanatic users so far - remember the big newspaper ads? And check out the "pledge map" on the site. Think how proud you'd be to see that you're one of a very few people in your country who has pledged to download it. Kind of a mix of national pride and geek pride.

Every web developer's dream is a world where all users have more standards-compliant browsers, and IE is forced to follow suit. I say hooray for almost anything that makes that closer to reality.

Not to disparage Mozilla, but lately it seems like they've been a mite too concerned with press releases. They should release when it's ready, and we'll get it when we think it's ready. What's the big rush?

Press releases, viral marketing, and publicity stunts like this are a big reason why worldwide Firefox market share is somewhere in the 30% range. Yeah, you've gotta have a solid product to begin with, but more open source projects would do well to emulate Mozilla's marketing and branding accomplishments.

Also, your post implies that Firefox will somehow be rushed out the door before it's ready, but if you've been following along you know that's very far from correct. Even the "download pledge"

Main Entry: trow [merriam-webster.com]Pronunciation: \'tro\ [long o improperly copypasta'ed]Function: verbEtymology: Middle English, from Old English trowan; akin to Old English trowe faithful, trueDate: before 12th century

I can't remember Firefox 1 pushing to install Firefox 2. You kept having updates as 1.x, but never insisted to move to Firefox 2. So I don't know where did you get that idea from. (Perhaps my Firefox 1 was broken?)

Then use the Nightly Tester Tool plugin to force it to work. Plugins will only work natively in Firefox 3 if the developer specifically typed that version in. I'm running Firefox RC1 at the moment and every plugin I need, large and small, works. Not all out of the box, but with Nightly Tester Tools, I can enable them and force them to work. As long as they're not dependent on an API that changed, which could be likely depending on the plugin, they will work.

How the hell is this "+5 Interesting"? There are roughly a gazillion of FF2 extensions out there, many of them have not been actively developed anymore for months or longer. So of course many (I'd rather say most) are not available for FF3 yet - and will probably never be.

The core extensions (yes, the definition of that term varies from user to user, I'm aware of that - but only to a point) are available though. Like Adblock Plus, Download Statusbar etc.

and, are they not going to consider the millions of copies of, say, internet explorer 7, downloaded the first day it was forced through as an automatic update? or how many downloads of itunes are there in a day when apple _requires_ an update?

You know, that's why they have a "release candidate", which is now available. The betas are over and done with. And, I hope, as a beta user that you submitted your issues for them to be addressed and resolved.

Completely opposite to the ideals of capitalism, those swines are trying to topple the world order with their no-cost merchandise.

However, few can say that Firefox is a software which you shouldn't own a copy of. Let's show them that enterpreunist powers rule with a firm iron hand and instead of criminally downloading a free version, buy a CD version of firefox on that particular day.

I have used Firefox for a few years and love it's potential.
But it has always been buggy and I was forced into v3 when I updated Ubuntu recently and I think it's got worse!
It crashes more now, they have changed features that I loved (like the way you save U/N and P/W) and on top of that most of my plugins don't work anymore:-(

That's the most brilliant thing I've seen in it so far (I've used the portable beta 3 for about an hour). When the password prompt isn't a window you can make sure the pasword is correct before storing it.

Actually, North Korea is a strong, technologically powerful country with a leader who is very tall, handsome, and manly. And I'm not just saying that because he kidnapped me and brought me here to make ripoffs of old John Wayne movies.

will be counted most probably. I dont know of many linux users who download directly from mozilla website. Most would use a package from their distribution which generally is not available on the same day (and even if it is, how will they count those downloads).

Also, I'm sure it's been said, but I hope they torrent this thing, else we'll have the record for most smoked servers since CNN got simultaneously Farked, Slashdotted, and Dugg for the last Britney Spears media stunt.

You clearly haven't worked with Fx3 yet. At first I was skeptical about the new smart bookmarks and address bar, but now that I've used it for a month or two (starting with beta 2) I'm quite pleased with it. The address bar basically does exactly the same as it always has, except now it actually does an on the fly substring search in your history instead of just giving an arbitrarily sorted list of previously visited sites.
I would dare say this is one of the biggest improvements to the web browsing experience in the last several years.

And something Opera [opera.com] invented first! (Among other things like tabbed browsing, mouse gestures in a browser, a zoom feature that also resizes images, etc, etc.). And Opera 9.50 even searches the contents of pages you have visited for more WIN.

And something Opera [opera.com] invented first! (Among other things like tabbed browsing, mouse gestures in a browser, a zoom feature that also resizes images, etc, etc.). And Opera 9.50 even searches the contents of pages you have visited for more WIN.

Hehe, Opera fans are the Browser War equivalent of "Frist P0st!". Not really adding anything, just making sure everyone knows: We had that feature first! No, look at us! Over here!

If Opera has so many great features so far ahead of everyone else, why is its usage still somewhere around 1% on a good day? If Opera can figure that out, maybe they'd get somewhere.

If Opera has so many great features so far ahead of everyone else, why is its usage still somewhere around 1% on a good day? If Opera can figure that out, maybe they'd get somewhere.

Maybe they need more silly publicity stunts like this one.

Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but yes, that's my point. Just having a good product isn't enough. I've used Opera, I use it for testing websites, it's really not my cup of tea but if their marketing was better I'm sure it could double or triple its user base.

I wasn't being sarcastic.:) I'd love to see Opera have more success, too - competition is good, especially competition for Internet Explorer. I just happen to be really accustomed to FireFox and all my beloved plugins.

I do use Opera Mobile on my BlackBerry, though, and it's an awesome browser. It almost makes up for the fact that I'm still surfing the web on a device with a tiny screen.

#3 isn't wrong. It doesn't have an addon/extension system. Built-in customization features do not count. Opera has no where near the extensibility of Firefox.

Don't get me wrong, I like Opera. I use it at work because it has the most compatibility with the websites I have to use without being IE. It's very fast and has a small footprint, CPU and memory-wise, but I just can't use it for my everyday surfing, simply because it lacks the ability to extend/support addons. The main addon I can't live without is adblock plus. Yes, I know Opera can do ad blocking, but who wants to add them by editing a file? And don't forget, adblock plus has pre-defined adblock list sources, so you don't even have to build your own just to get a decent amount of ads blocked; the list does it automatically.

Living without something like Adblock Plus is a deal breaker when using a browser.

That said, I'm quite fond of what Opera has done for mobile devices. Opera mini is far and away the best mobile browsing solution for virtually any hand-held device (particularly Windows Mobile devices).

I would wholeheartedly agree, if it weren't a JME app! Which means no copy and paste of URLs, no sending links via SMS, etc.

I sure wish they would hurry up and release Opera Mobile 9, it sounds like it will have all the great rendering and zoom/navigation features of Mini with the benefit of being a native app like Mobile. I will gladly pay the $25 or whatever for it when it's released; Pocket IE is worthless.

Actually, I recall from previous discussions that tabbed browsing existed before Opera.
But it's a nice, though quite unused piece of software. Firefox has won me over thanks to its great extendability.

Which is all fine and good, if you don't have a lot of bookmarks. If, on the other hand, you have a rather full history and lots of bookmarks, the bar freezes for a few seconds while it has to search through everything you've visited and all your bookmarks to try to find the thing you're looking for. And heaven help you if you've got many pages with similar titles in the history. In the old address bar, pages appeared chronologically, so you could easily go to the most recently visited page out of the se

You know, I've actually made up this shit. Whoever even looked at about:config, saw that there is no such key. And even when you add it, it doesn't work.The person who modded me informative... Has done something stupid. It only shows how stupid people are to not think for themselves... Tell them something that sounds remotely reasonable, something that they might agree with, and they'll believe, they'll follow.

Right. Into. A. Trap.

(I know I'm risking getting modded down to the hell. But who cares. Even only

Actually, I've been using Fx3 since beta1. I still am not really keen on the thing. Unless I make sure to keep my bookmarks and history trimmed down, it freezes my system for a few seconds as it trudges through things. This is irritating, especially when I was just wanting to type in an address real quick and not have possible matches pulled up. It consumes more time in searching for possible results than it saves me in typing.

This might sound dumb, but I wish the new address bar would go away. My laptop gets passed around the house, and I don't want my browsing history pop up to all my family members.

They don't care, so they're not snooping around (I don't live with them normally, there was a death in the family so I've come back home for a bit) but they don't appreciate my youporn stuff popping up in their face because of that silly autocomplete stuff. How can I got back to the old way?